In 1936 Charles Purbrook, a silversmith, built himself a clinker sailing dinghy. Before he had finished it someone bought it and before long he found himself doing, with help from our long serving foreman Tom Kerley, more boatbuilding than silversmithing. These Coot class dinghies caught on and in 1938 he moved to a boatyard on the river Avon at Christchurch. Just before the war he designed and built for himself an 18 foot half decked dayboat which he called Shelduck. During the war the yard built whalers and lifeboats. After the war they returned to building Coots and Shelducks, introducing several new designs of clinker dinghies, and quite soon a cabin version of the Shelduck.
In 1949 Hugh Rossiter, who had trained as a naval architect with practical experience in ship and boat building, joined the firm at the time the yard was embarking on their 22 foot Heron. He took over from Charles Purbrook in 1951 and continued building wooden boats to the firm's designs.

From time to time we built one-off boats to other people's designs including those of Kim Holman and Maurice Griffiths. The most notable was the counter stern Twister 'Eulali'which won Lloyd's Yacht Trophy in 1967. The increased draught of these boats had prompted a move down river to the larger boatyard where we are now. This also gave us more room to lay up the increasing number of boats we had built. In 1962 Hugh Rossiter designed the 27 foot Pintail which was built in wood until 1970, when the growing demand for glassfibre boats prompted us into having Pintail hulls moulded in GRP. But we did not abandon wood and achieved in the new Pintail an unusual and happy blend of glassfibre and wood.

Hugh Rossiter's son Charles, a qualified naval architect who had been involved in glass fibre boats at Lloyds, joined the firm in 1978. About this time the yard fitted out to a high standard several boats to the designs of Laurent Giles and Holman & Pye. The logical next step was a 32 foot boat which we designed in 1979, calling on the firm's skill and experience gained from designing and building Shelducks, Herons and Pintails. The result is Curlew, first built in traditional carvel in 1980 and followed by glassfibre in 1981.

ROSSITER YACHTS are very pleased that Crispin Rossiter has joined the company. Cris is the third generation of the family to become involved and is the son of Charlie, grandson of Hugh. He served a boatbuilding apprenticeship at Blondecell and worked at Transworld Yachts on the Fairey Swordsman range before moving to the Christchurch boatyard. His connection with the Swordsman is maintained, as he is now in charge of the moulding of the Swordsman 30, which Rossiters are undertaking for Transworld. It is too early to say whether the 4th generation will follow on - Cris’ 4 year old daughter Elspeth is more interested in fairy princesses than Faireys & Princesses at the moment.